- Top Features:
- War Room
- Glenn Greenwald
- Broadsheet
- Joan Walsh
- Camille Paglia
- Since You Asked
- Follow Salon:
Read other letters about this article
I must say I didn't follow the Rich pardon well enough to have ever heard this supposed justification about civil suits. But as a litigator (sorry to use that appeal to authority, I don't mean to suggest I know everything but I do have some experience) that claim sounds like pure bullshit to me. It is true that judges have the power to stay civil suits pending a criminal trial and would normally be inclined to do so, because of the difficulties that the civil discovery process can inflict upon a defendant who's also facing a civil trial. But a fugitive? I find it hard to imagine any court refusing to allow a civil suit to proceed where the criminal trial was being indefinitely delayed by the defendant's own act of fleeing the country. I'd be happy to be shown I was wrong by actual decisions from courts in the cases that were supposedly stalled, but without that I find Clinton's claim to be pretty implausible.
